This article will discuss WordPress from an industry point of view based on over 10 years of website production work using WordPress for our clients.

Websites use to be ALL code

Back in the ’90s and the ‘2000s front end website developers and even backend interfaces did not exist for websites in the way they do today. Most websites were created by coding HTML, CSS and Javascript into their sites and the skillset was in high demand.

WordPress is used by web design agencies, freelancers and bloggers all over the world because it is so well supported. WordPress is also not dependent on skillset relating to web design either.

This means that people born in the 80s or 90s who learnt code as a kid, went on to study at university to learn how to code are competing in a changing industry where the requirement to know as much (coding skills) to succeed in the industry is now minimal. Compare this to when the individual was in school and everyone begged the one web designer in the class to edit their MySpace profile layout for them.

Nowadays anyone can take a short course on YouTube on how to build a website and get access to basically what’s referred to as an ‘App store’ where people can download plugins for their site, enabling the features they want and a theme for little or no expense.

WordPress is free and so is many of its plugins and themes

Themes and plugins have been mostly free for over the last decade, so WordPress has the reputation of being a free plugin and theme platform. If you need a premium paid plugin for your website the associated costs to upgrade is not substantial and often works out to be a lot cheaper than hiring a developer.

This makes it very easy and cost-effective to start a website especially if you have limited knowledge of web design and on a tight budget.

WordPress is not just for beginners who are getting started with their site. WordPress overall is a super amazing platform to build websites and if you have developed your skills with WordPress and invest in expanding your knowledge of the platform will allow you to build better customisations for your website.

If you are feeling brave you can dive into web development and learn how to edit and create WordPress themes and plugins, or you can use a well-featured plugin that has their own API that allows integrations with minimal coding required.

It is safe to say that choosing WordPress for your website is an all-round solid choice for website owners.

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Instagram had just been launched in late 2010 and wasn’t even a question I asked for five years if a business had one or not. Nowadays every business I talk to I’m always bringing up the big social media giants.

The last decade has been another decade of fast-path growth for the growing worldwide web. If you compare the fact that 20 years ago Telstra was only had just started offering ADSL broadband and it took 10 years to get most of the country connected to stable internet.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a campaign promise in the 2007 election about building the NBN using fibre to the premises. At the time the NBN was debated to be an ‘overkill’ and compromises were made to save costs. The NBN was a very much debated topic among technology enthusiasts and by too many people in power not understanding the technology.

Regardless of your view on the NBN issue, we can tell you now that the NBN is already in the works of being eventually replaced by the growing 5G network. Although this won’t be something we will be seeing until the middle of the next decade on a mass-market scale.

Websites have very much changed across the web in the last decade, The cost of producing and maintaining a website has dropped thanks to the competition between web agencies that have popped up.

Websites are focused on social media marketing and referring social media visitors to your website or vice versa. This trend changed after FaceBook introduced FaceBook pixel which gives publishers and businesses the ability to retarget ads on social media.

Another noticeable change has been the number of website builders and their technologies. As mentioned before due to the advancements in developing responsive websites using automated user interfaces the cost of labour of creating a website has dramatically decreased.

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Web Design and Tech: The last decade and what has changed

This is a strategy to help our customers avoid those unwanted spam phone calls to your business as you are required to submit registration information such:

• Your name
• Your business or personal address
• Contact number
• E-mail address

This information is typically harvested for illegal and rather annoying marketing practices. If you own a business e-mail address and you have hardly given out your e-mail address and you’re getting spammed then it is a good sign that your contact information has been harvested.

Typically this information is used by web design firms in third world countries as an endless supply of possible new clients who get bombarded with e-mails from the moment they register a new domain.

Why get a domain privacy addon?

It masks your private information behind a corporate body that retains your real contact information for legitimate requests. For example if you are infringing on someone’s trademark they can request to have your contact information released so that they can file a lawsuit. Having domain privacy allows you to keep your information private which can help you avoid unwanted harassment which is really handy if you are registering your domain from your business address which happens to be your home.

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Free Domain Privacy for every new domain name you register

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Adelaide Web Hosting Support

SSL certificates work to keep your connection secure

SSL certificates encrypt your web traffic between you and the server. This is done through the SSL protocol https:// which uses port 443 on your device to establish that secure connection.

SSL certificates increase your user’s confidence with your brand

Another reason why you need an SSL certificate is trusted websites have the reputation of using SSL on their websites and it really does lift the trust between the site and the user. It could be said that visiting a website with SSL does create a kind of virtual handshake between a website and a user.

SSL certificates make your website faster

SSL because of its technical aspects make loading pages slightly faster because it splits the traffic between two protocols and is a more constant direct user to server connection than the normal HTTP:// requests over port 80. It is just that SSL is a more efficient technology than HTTP.

SSL certificates stop prying eyes

Keeping your connection from prying eyes is reduced greatly by using websites that use https:// enabled on their site. This prevents from typical spying and having what you do on these websites monitored by hackers.

SSL certificates are cheap

SSL Certificates are cheap and are sometimes free. There are benefits to paying extra for an SSL certificate.

Getting an SSL certificate

You can ask your web hosting provider for assistance with installing the certificate on your account. cPanel hosting usually offers an auto-SSL certificate which is issued by cPanel for your domains and subdomains for a few months and then is renewed. It may be beneficial to purchase a retail SSL certificate for your domain because not all SSL certificates are the same.

SSL certificates are needed for compliance

Many e-commerce providers who provide secure API’s and process payment information securely so you wouldn’t be able to run an e-commerce website without it. And if you are collecting any kind of user data like names, addresses, and phone numbers then you definitely need an SSL certificate. Users would be hesitant of handing any information over on a non-secure website. It’s the strongest reason why you need an SSL certificate.

In fact, if you don’t take precautions to protect users data you can be held liable for security breaches and you could be fined a huge sum of money depending on the size of the breach. Having a paid SSL certificate that is issued by a premium provider they offer insurance if the SSL is ever breached. For example if the SSL connection is decrypted by any means (which is an unlikely scenario) they will pay out a lump sum to cover liability costs such as fines and legal fees.

This might be a reason to choose a premium SSL provider rather than a free provider such as Let’sEncrypt or cPanel SSL certificates. From personal experience from using premium SSL certificates and free certificate providers there are pros and cons but if you’re just running a simple blog and not collecting data or processing private information you could justify just using a free SSL certificate.

If you are running a e-commerce website than a strong reason to get a premium SSL certificate is that your site will become targetted by hackers and known exploits. Hackers would go above and beyond to hack into your website if you become a big enough business to virtually rob of personal information. Most businesses that have serious sized security breaches lost their reputation and trust. Usually, it becomes such a big PR issue for the business that it never goes away.

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7 Reasons why you need a SSL Certificate